Julian Opie interviewed for Noblesse Magazine in relation to his exhibition at Fosun Foundation, Shanghai.

Q: This is a very big project for you, and the museum is very new – it just launched. So I was wondering: when you find out about these projects, how do you organise and structure your exhibition because you are a very material artist? Nearly everyone, especially in the professional field, knows you and your work already – you’re already established in contemporary art’s history. So how do you present a new look to the audience in this new museum?

A: It’s nice of you to say that. I don't know how well known I am. A lot of being known is to do with modern media, so often people know a little from an art fair, or a magazine, or a CD cover, but what’s great about this show is that it gives me a chance to actually show, in a broad way, what I’m doing with more variety. For an audience, it’s very different to see the actual object compared to seeing an image in a magazine, or on the internet. I value the chance to bring the work, even though it’s complicated and expensive to bring it all the way across the world. I think it’s really valuable for me as a thing to do.

When I get asked to do an exhibition these days, I have an assistant who’s very good at building three-dimensional models, so we build the model of the architectural space I’d be exhibiting in and using VR, I put the works on the wall and that way I can walk around the exhibition and make judgements as to where things should go. I do that for many weeks, changing the works, making ideas for new works, and this gives me great control. In the old days, people would make drawings or models of the exhibition space, and they’d cut out or print versions of their work to physically hang on the tiny walls, and then try to see how that would look. This new system is working quite well for me, and I would like to put all the models on my website so you can walk around the exhibition too.

There is always a jump from your plan and the model to actually coming here and hanging the works on the wall. You really have to get into gear and make some tough decisions like maybe taking some works out, moving them around, that kind of thing. I’ve had to do that on this occasion. I came here about a year ago, but it wasn’t at all clear that I would make an exhibition here, it was an idea – maybe downstairs. As the year went by, it became more certain and then this floor also became available, so I didn’t have that much time to prepare for it – maybe six to eight months. For me, every exhibition is an expression of where I am now; this isn’t old work, you can see if you read the dates, there might be a few works from 2013, but generally I use what I’ve made recently. I don’t think of my art as ‘finished’ when it’s just in the studio; it’s finished when it’s here. Making the exhibition is part of the process of making an artwork, and I’ve taken that a bit further here by making a lot of works onsite and using ways of creating landscapes within the exhibition space itself. It’s almost like one big picture of sheep with landscapes behind and people walking, etc. Downstairs, in a more urban way, there’s a similar thing happening – I’ve built towers that are big enough that you can walk through them and become involved in the picture yourself.

Q: Usually, a lot of your work revolves around the human figure, but now it seems that you’ve transferred your interests into nature and landscapes, how did that happen?

A: There’s partly a sense of autobiography in that. I gather the information I need to make work from the world around me. I don’t really often go out and seek it purposefully – I have occasionally; I’ve taken some trips across Sweden and Norway, and a trip across Australia in order to gather information. I send photographers to different cities to take photographs of people. Often, however, I find that the best thinking is when you don’t expect it – you just think ‘oh, that’s cool’. So, with my phone or my camera, I take photographs of things that I see that inspire me, or give me the feeling that I could use them. I live in the city, but I spend all my free time in the countryside – I have a house there with a view I’ve often drawn. A lot of the landscapes I do, as I said, are quite autobiographical. I’ve drawn views from a hotel room I stayed in in Taiwan when I did a project there, and so on. I need information, so I get it myself. I don’t like to look on the internet and find information – it feels more potent and real if I find it myself. Ever since I was young, I’ve always drawn landscapes as much as people, or anything else. I look around and I draw everything I can see. Cars, animals, buildings, people. For many years, I used to draw small things like books and phones and cups – I don’t do that anymore, for reasons I don’t quite know. They were more like a still life; maybe one day I’ll go back to that.

I think there’s a big difference between landscapes and portraiture. The difference is that with a landscape, you enter the picture mentally, visually – you go inside, like through a window. With a portrait, you don’t go into it because there’s already someone there. You’re not allowed in the picture, the picture is coming out at you. That’s a very different process, one that’s very interesting for different projects, but I really like the landscapes. The tapestry works are also very new, and what I like about those is that the tapestry and the cloth is very real. When you look at it, you feel the softness, you feel the threads, and that’s very present. But your brain and your eyes are whizzing fast into this space as if in a car. I use that combination of speed and entry into the picture, and then a very material quality to bring you back to the surface. There’s a kind of magical battle, I hope it’s magical – that’s the idea.

Q: A lot of your art is quite abstract. Why did you choose this direction to express your work? When you were at Goldsmiths, were you inspired by other British artists who worked that way, like Michael Craig-Martin?

A: It’s hard to answer that. I’ll start with Michael Craig-Martin, who was a really great teacher, and a good friend. I was lucky to have him. He taught at the best school, because he was clever to pick it, and I went to the best school because I was a little bit clever to notice it was good. I only got in because Michael Craig-Martin said in my interview, “I think, maybe, he could be good.” It was a fortunate moment, and he was such a good teacher because I could understand him. Most of the teachers were nice, and often interesting, but I didn’t really understand them – not for me, when I’m making my work. But there was something about Michael that was very clear – he has a very 1960s American clarity to him. He’s like Steve Reich, or something, both in his teaching, and his art – he is a great artist. I was also his assistant for a while, I made some exhibitions for him, and I learnt a great deal from him. The way that he worked and talked made sense for me, so that’s that answer.

Then you asked about choosing an art style: I think that people often feel that artists choose things, and maybe some do, but I don’t. There’s no choice involved, really. You go where the work takes you. One work leads to another – making art isn’t really about finishing that work, it’s about finding a way onwards. It’s more like a journey, and you need to reach one town in order to get to the next. It’s not really that you want that specific town, but you’re there, so as you go, you make all of these artworks, but they’re more like the results of your journey or your experiments lying around behind you. That’s enough metaphors. I don’t choose to make a landscape, it’s more like one experiment. But bit by bit, you move along, but there's always a small number of possibilities to make, and then one year later there’ll be a different number of possibilities. But that’s not the case with everything – I can’t suddenly make oil paintings in a photographic style. I don’t know how to do that, I don’t have the feeling for it, nor the energy. Next year, I probably won’t be able to do the work I’m doing now, even if I wanted to – even if someone asks me to make them another one because these have all been sold. I can’t do it, it doesn’t work, the picture falls apart – the energy is gone. There’s nothing mystical about it anymore. You need to feel the need to understand something, to have the clarity to make that piece of work. I didn’t choose any of that really, I just followed my instincts. I started working in the 80’s, even if I had been drawing as a child since the 70s, but I finished college in 1979/80, and I started making exhibitions three years later, or thereabouts. That was a period that’s generally called Postmodern, and it was also at the end of the punk movement in terms of music and style. That of course influenced me and was my background. For Postmodernists, ‘style’ wasn't something that you developed, it was something that you used. We looked at abstract expressionism, we looked at minimalism, impressionism, Ukiyo-e prints, Baroque… all of these things were usable in a minimal sort of way – like materials: wood, metal, concrete. I think a lot of people interpreted that attitude as quite nihilistic, quite negative, but it didn’t feel that way, it felt more like a way of embracing the world. Rather than to say ‘none of that is for me, I’m only ‘this’’, it was saying that it was all part of the world; you can draw with this or with that. I was taking 1950s style paintings and mixing it with other things – I can’t specifically remember what as it was a long time ago, but I was mixing it up. In a way, I was being kind of irreverent, as is right at the age of 21 or 22.

Q: Have you ever traced back how you work to see if you forecasted the future?

A: Not consciously, but I find myself circling the same ideas. We recently rebuilt a part of the studio and there are boxes of old things in the basement –  I’ve been taking them out and throwing most of them away, but I find drawings and think, “oh my goodness, this is a drawing of the painting I just did last week! And I did it in 1987!” It’s a charcoal drawing and it’s not very good, but it’s roughly the same thing. It was a picture of a person drawn like the lavatory symbol, and she’s lying on a bed like in a painting, and that’s the same idea I use now. But I didn’t know what to do with it then; I didn’t have a computer or a studio, I just had a piece of paper and a pencil. Over the years, I’ve been going around in circles of the same thing. When I was 17, in my parents’ house, I painted their wall with a light blue for the sky, a dark blue for the sea, and a thin strip of green across the middle, that was all, roughly. It made the room feel like it was in the countryside, and that’s the same as some of the pictures I do now, in a way. Perhaps all artists find this, that you circle the same projects and ideas but your life changes around that. Now, I have more resources like a studio and assistants, exhibitions and more experience. I don’t know if what I’m producing is any better but I just continue to work because I enjoy it.

Q: So do you think your work is a weapon to make people understand the city better? There are a lot of problems in the city – in your work we can see buildings, figures, and also we can see the sceneries and landscapes. We can see your attitude towards the city. Some critics have identified your work as a weapon to re-understand the city – would you agree with that?

A: Every question is complex and any answer you can disagree with an hour later, but I would say, absolutely not. I don’t see my work as a weapon of any kind, and I don’t feel like I have any specific message for people to follow or change. I have more of a sense of greeting, an attempt at communication and engagement. For me, making artwork is about engaging with the world myself, and I suppose I do that anyway, but by making artwork, you take that engagement process and make something of it. That’s so valuable to me. The idea of living life and having all of your observations and interests and feelings simply dissipate would be terrible. What I love about making art is that all of your observations, interests, and enthusiasms can create or go into building a ‘thing’. Once you’ve finished that thing, it’s not perfect, it’s not as good as I would dream or like it to be, but it is something. I’m really happy and fortunate that people also seem to enjoy looking at them. I collect art and love other art, and I feel the same things from that other art – that sense of identifying a connection and energy with the world. If I can do that too, how great is that? I would also love to collect lots more art, but it’s not that easy or possible, but as an artist, I can make it myself. It’s almost like collecting art from the world but making it myself. I collect a lot of ancient art, which is sometimes very hard to find – mostly Egyptian, Roman, Japanese, and some more recent European art. Making my own work is like making a response to the work that I love, but I don’t see it as either criticising or promoting. Who am I to be negative? I react, and it’s more just a story of my engagement and experience to share with other people. Within that, there is a kind of politics. There are politics to sharing, there are politics to try and open your vision and see if other people feel the same way, but it’s perhaps a more gentle one.

Q: So, what’s the most attractive element in other artworks that you collect?

A: I think a sense of life. When I see something, even in an art fair – I buy contemporary art sometimes too – suddenly it just stands out. Everything else goes away. It has this energy and life that is a direct engagement, almost like magic in a way. Magic is about breaking the rules of physics and reality. I’m not a big believer or anything, but I like the thought and the feeling, and people love magic. It breaks that sense of normality and reality, and that’s a connection in your mind that’s very direct, and that’s how I feel when I see art that I like.